Question

Your bill at a restaurant was $29.54, which included the tax at a rate of 7.4%. What was the price before tax? Decimals allowed and round ANSWER to two place.

Answer 1

Let's think about what happens when you find the price after tax. Let the price before tax be $p$. The tax rate is $7.4 \% = .074$, so the tax part of the total price is $.074p$. Adding that onto the original price, we see that

$p + .074p = \ 29.54$
$1.074p = \ 29.54$

So, we can just divide each side by $1.074$ to get the original price, which rounded to two decimal places is $\bf \ 27.50$.